


The Key to Her Heart

by Soran_Chan



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Falling In Love, Love Confessions, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24761692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soran_Chan/pseuds/Soran_Chan
Summary: Rimi had never been privy to the secrets of Arisa’s heart; if she had been given a welcome invitation, then someone else had been given a key. ---- Even so, some fights were worth losing.
Relationships: Ichigaya Arisa/Ushigome Rimi
Kudos: 13





	The Key to Her Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally write this stiffly, but it just kind of turned out this way, ;; Anyway, please humor me in my attempts to write something vaguely romantic for the first time in many, many years!
> 
> Cheers!

Reserved.

If tasked to choose a single word to describe Arisa, Rimi would doubtless decide on this very word that others so often referred to _her_ with: reserved.

When was it that she settled on this descriptor? She surely wouldn’t have described the guarded girl being tugged around by Kasumi last spring as reserved--perhaps _wary,_ or better yet _closed-off,_ but in that cheerful girl’s presence scathingly _sincere, sensitive_ and _flustered._

Perhaps it was that first late afternoon they shared alone in the girl’s basement, the brand new keyboard plugged in but unplayed, Rimi’s bass ringing hollow on its lonesome. The solemn girl, her expression exemplarily executed--that is, sentenced to death by the drop of the guillotine, her face as blank as the backs of the index cards she sifted through, her air that of a quiet queen in whose presence Rimi dared not speak without Her Majesty’s permission.

 _That_ girl could perhaps be described as _reserved,_ but more suitably Rimi would have chosen _stately,_ _regal,_ or even _exalted:_ a being whom Rimi regarded more intently than any other, not for her fear of her life, but from feeling the fear of that girl, a fear Rimi knew quite well: the fear of a discouraged despot at the precipice of their state’s dismantlement--the fear of being discarded and inevitably destroyed.

The fear of those replaceable.

Rimi knew how important it was to have a place where one belonged. Were it not for the shelter she was secured in her beloved sister’s heart, she surely would have sunk in her self-wrought sea of sobering normalcy, of shy complacency, of sorrowful hesitance and cowardice. It was one thing to be alone, to be estranged behind tall walls and to chain the gates iron-tight; it was another to have those walls broken down, only to be abandoned in the ruins of your solitary castle.

To have had her heart pried open by that starry song savior, only to be left on the periphery to watch the hero court the next lone soul they encountered… It had weighed on Rimi that she alone could act as Arisa’s own royal court in that time.

But those days passed, and the queen and hero reconciled. Rimi sunk back into the shadows, ashamed she could do no more than wait on Her Majesty, but honestly relieved to see her composed complexion break into a secret smile. It was a smile that Rimi saw more often than perhaps anyone else, watching as closely as she did--it was a smile Arisa hid from Kasumi. She tucked the memory of that expression away in her heart, even if it wasn’t meant for her.

Not meant for her… Things rarely seemed meant for her. She often wondered if she was a burden to the others, to Arisa. When she diligently did her part, the others were delighted...but should she stumble, everything seemed to skid to a stop, collapsing all around her.

This house of cards they called friendship was so easily toppled by the queen of spades. Rimi had never been privy to the secrets of Arisa’s heart; if she had been given a welcome invitation, then someone else had been given a key. To hear secondhand from Kasumi and Saaya what Arisa had been hiding from Poppin’Party was at first a relief, but then a disappointing reminder that she was not the one Arisa would ever turn to.

_“I was just...going through a lot, and it made me kinda high-strung…”_

Rimi remembered that day well: the dizzying fever that clouded her mind; the chills, the trembling, the gravel in her throat. Pushing herself despite it all, through it all, in the only way she knew how: wholeheartedly.

_“I don’t care.”_

_Hurt_ was not the right word to describe her feelings as she ran up the stairs and out the door, only to collapse in a curled-up ball of flowing tears and coughing sobs at the front gate. _Hurt_ didn’t quite capture how it felt to turn at the warmth of a hand on her shoulder, the fractures in her heart piecing back together for but a moment, only to splinter once more at the sight of Saaya’s sad smile--

\--not hers, not hers, not hers.

Rather than hurt, though hurt she was, she would say she felt _reservation._ She learned to section off that part of her heart that wanted to be more than the supporting cast. She learned to hesitate, to swallow down, to quarantine the disease that plagued their relationship: the disease called lovesickness.

And as for Arisa, Rimi could only view her as someone just out of arm’s reach. When Rimi stepped forward, Arisa stepped back; and when Arisa pulled away, Rimi ran after her. Forever tied to one another, but not tightly enough to lace together their separated fingers.

If Rimi had learned to lock away her heart, then Arisa had always done so from the start...and the one allowed in was not Rimi.

Arisa was reserved, but not for her.


End file.
